Three men in a white truck, blue-lettered on the sides swabbed the rust-colored stains till the kitchen was pure and even the old porch looked newer. The spike of ammonia hurt your throat, and Reverend Light plunged in afterwards to bless the house roof-to-cellar with puffs of black ash from his metal wand, filling it up with his kind of clean, though it didn’t feel any different to me.

You still knew Ma had died there.

Aunt Lucy's eyes were slits, they were so puffy. Ma was her sister, and for thirty years Pa was like a brother to her. I watched as she wept like a sieve of grief, her shoulders shaking under Uncle Fred’s fat arm. Aunt Lucy looked a lot like an older Ma. I looked like Pa, folks said, but my beard was no more than wisps, then. I was thirteen.

Before the sheriff came back, I'd known they'd find Pa. The pickup sat off the dirt road in a thicket of woods. His body was cold already, slumped at an odd angle half out of the cab, half a mile from the shack where he'd stayed since he and Ma separated. The rifle was sideways in the bramble.

We waited for my aunt and uncle to finish going through our house, making an inventory. They seemed to touch everything, stuff I’d never even known we had. Ma and Pa weren’t even in the ground before they clamored all over the house.

My sister and I sat on the porch and watched her boyfriend, Rick Ehlers, leave. He didn’t know what to say, so he lumbered off, this farm boy neighbor of ours with arms and legs like small trees. He was four years older than Didi, and always sunburned. My Pa’d hated him.

Didi asked me, “Did you know this was coming?”

I stared at Didi. She looked a lot like Ma and Aunt Lucy, with that heart-shaped face and green eyes. But Didi had a crazy streak in her, where Ma was sweet. None of us could believe when Ma threw Pa out of the house. She’d got the police to come and everything. But still we never thought she really meant it. When she stuck a ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard, we still didn’t believe it.

Didi looked at me with watery eyes and she smelled like beer. I was old enough to know the mark on her neck was a hickey, and how it got there. Didi didn’t care if the whole world saw.

“How are you supposed to know something like that?” I was mad, even though I knew she only asked because I was closer to Pa than she was. She thought he’d hated her. He didn’t hate her. He was mad that she was fourteen and hanging around with Barney Ehler’s oldest son. Rick was eighteen, and Barney was Pa’s best friend. After Rick brought Didi home drunk, the veins popped out of Pa’s neck till I thought he’d kill him. But Pa just went over to Barney’s house to talk. When he got back he never spoke to Barney again. Ma kicked him out just after that. Still Didi wouldn’t give Rick up.

Even after Pa moved, Didi still had to sneak around because it seemed like Ma didn’t feel much better about the whole thing. Barney Ehlers started to come over to the house and talk to Ma in low tones. I figured they must have been talking about Didi and Rick because Ma got real quiet and her cheeks got red when I’d come up the porch steps, and she’d make some comment to Barney like she was sorry, but she had chores to do.

Didi stood up, slightly wobbly. “Ma told me Pa’d kill her if she filed for divorce.” Didi said dee-vorce, the way the old folks did.

I was surprised, but didn’t answer.

“Ma said every husband says that,” she added, looking up the path where Rick had disappeared into the trees.

~~~

Pa took me hunting once. It was the one night I stayed at the shack. There was an early snow, and we woke and went to the woods behind. He had just the one rifle. He cradled it in his arms as he lit a burled pipe. Dawn was coming, streaking the sky dark red.

Pa gazed off into the distance, where you could just see the mist rising from the mountains. He drew on the pipe; puffs of smoke curled like a mask around his face before they wreathed and floated away. He pointed where the fresh deer tracks lay in the snow. He tried to hand me the gun, but I didn’t like the cold, heavy feel of it. I handed it back.

"I don't like shooting," I said. I slid my hands in my pockets.

When I looked up, he had his back to me. His neck looked stiff, like he was disappointed, but he just puffed on his pipe.

I kept saying I would, but I never did stay over again. . With him and Didi falling out, it was either going to be me or no one, but still I couldn’t get myself to stay.

I kept thinking that wasn’t his real house,. I told myself if I slept there every time, it meant for sure he wasn’t coming back.

~~~

Didi and I used to have ceremonies when we were kids. We’d bury a squirrel or what was left of a rabbit after we chased off a coyote. We did it with flair and great solemn care. The rites somehow elevated the poor beasts to what we thought was their noble and proper place in the world.

Ma and Pa were buried together. Uncle Fred said they were together for so long, it was the right thing. I couldn’t help thinking he went cheap. Aunt Lucy told Didi it's only bodies; their spirits could be apart all they liked. I wondered what Ma would think. It bothered me to watch them slide the caskets in one on top of the other, and cover them with dirt.

Even the wake was joint. Funny, how death filled a house. Uncle Fred took charge of the gathering. He was a big man with a thick neck and ruddy cheeks. He talked quietly, nodding our way once in a while and drank his bourbon.

“I loved Ma,” Didi said. She cried so hard her mascara was halfway down her face.

“Yeah,” I said. I loved her too. I moved off to breathe my own air.

Didi sat with Rick in the living room across the hall, Aunt Lucy and the other women hovered around her. It looked bad the way she bawled the whole time, sticking her face in Rick’s shirt, letting him hold her up like she was a sack of wet cement. If I drifted by, he looked at me with those dog eyes but didn’t say anything. Once he looked like he was going to put his hand on my arm. I thought, he’d better not touch me.

After everyone had a few drinks, Rick kissed Didi, right in front of the whole room. It wasn’t like a kiss to make her feel better, either. I looked at Uncle Fred. It didn’t seem to bother him or Aunt Lucy at all the way Didi hung around with Rick, gone most of the time.

Looking at Uncle Fred pulling on his drink I felt mad. He was a lot bigger than me but I wanted to get in his face. My thoughts turned to Pa’s red pickup truck, still sitting out there in the woods. "What about the truck?" I wanted to ask. "Aren't you gonna get it back?" I figured they could clean the truck just like they cleaned the house. The words formed in my mouth, but got stuck.

Truth was, I didn't really care. It wasn’t about the truck. My tongue felt thick. I wished I could have some of that whiskey.

Fred stood talking to Roger Simmons, the mortician. I circled behind their backs to fill my glass with punch from Ma’s old crystal bowl. I could hear his hushed voice. “I found his papers. He left enough to keep them going for a year,” Fred said. Roger nodded approvingly. “With the life insurance they’ll be able to finish high school, I calculate.”

I looked around and nobody was looking, so I poured some bourbon in my punch and went up to sit at the top of the stairs.

Didi came up the stairs to take a pee and left Rick down with the others. “Pa left papers.” I told her what I’d heard Uncle Fred say.

“There’s no law we got to finish school,” Didi said. I knew that. I was old enough to drop out in March; Didi already was. There was a note for us, too. But I didn’t find out about that till weeks later. Uncle Fred found it among Pa's papers, and snatched it up. One night he was whispering to Lucy and I saw it on the supper table. I didn't get to read it, but recognized Pa's writing.

Uncle Fred had turned to look at me with a guilty look and a flush of dark red crossed his face. He didn't meet my eye. "When you're older," he’d said.

When I’d told Didi, she’d said, "He's got no right," and stomped off to Aunt Lucy. But the woman just started to cry. She put her arms around Didi and snuggled her to her chest like she was going to crush her.

We’d let it go, then. It didn't help that Aunt Lucy had the same eyes as Ma, the same shape face. I'd watch her sometimes and get a rock in my throat.

~~~

Lucy and Fred were still with us. They didn't seem in a hurry to leave. I'd come to think of them as just plain Lucy and Fred, though I didn't say it to their faces. I couldn't help thinking how they didn't have a house of their own. We didn’t ask how long they’d stay, but every once in a while they’d talk about how they told their landlord “just one more month.” I wasn’t sure I believed it.

Lucy and Fred always went to bed early, and by this time of night Fred was snoring. They left the door open. I hated to see them lying in Ma’s old room. I hated listening to Uncle Fred’s noises. It was nicer outside: it was Indian summer, and warm. Me and Didi sat on the porch. . She was running around a lot, especially with Rick Ehlers, since she’d quit school. We hadn’t talked much since the funeral. It seemed like every time we got a chance, I got this big lump in my throat.or else I felt mad. Didi was drinking a Budweiser. She took a pull and passed me the can. We sat and looked out over the fields.

"Maybe we should just leave here," Didi said. "Give the house to them. They want it so bad, they can have it."

I was quiet. I knew she was mad at Lucy and Fred, too. I said, "The truck, too. Let them have it all."

"I want out of here." She looked at me. "I want to travel. I would have, you know."

"I know." She was fifteen now, looking seventeen.

"He wanted us to have this house,” Didi said. I knew that. I was torn, though. It was a lot of work running a small farm, and Uncle Fred wasn’t able to help. He had the gout bad in his legs, and couldn’t do much. But I thought we could do it. I wanted to do it, for Pa. It was what he would have wanted.

I stared through the darkness at her face, but she didn't see me. I looked around the yard and at the sky. The blanket of heat was lifting, leaving a faint trace of breeze. The sky was black and still beneath the fullness of stars.

“I’ve asked Rick to move in,” Didi said. “He’ll be a big help around here.”

I was quiet.

“When?”

“As soon as Lucy and Fred leave,” Didi said.

I didn’t say anything. I looked up at the sky and saw Scorpius. It glittered overhead, its tail curling like a question mark in a mirror, or half a heart.

~~~

It was cool in the morning when I woke.

Fred left for town, taking Lucy. I'd heard them at breakfast, and knew he was dropping her at a friend's house to sew.

After the truck pulled away, the house was solemn as church. I listened for a moment to its silence, then climbed the stairs. I knew where I was going, and it didn't take long before I found Pa's note.

It was two pages, though parts of it were blurred. Most of the first page told where he left things, the papers and such. On the second page, he wrote about the house. How it was the only place that he’d lived with Ma their whole time together, and he wasn’t gonna let her sell it. I scanned down and saw, ...for you kids, not her. So you can have this house... Then I saw …your Ma and Barney Ehlers… and my eyes got stuck there.

I felt sort of numb when I stumbled outside. I headed for the creek behind the house, wanting to watch it bubble and swirl, but as I circled ‘round the house, I had to stop to look at it. The stones at the base sagged and jutted, firmed up with block in parts. Some slabs had lost grout; some were dry-laid, or the mud was long gone. Weeds sprouted from the cracks like stalks of wheat.

I looked up to the eave where I’d been watching a robin build a nest. It wasn’t there any more. I looked down at my feet and saw the nest lying on the grass. There were two half shells, bright blue and empty, spilled out of it.

Under the tin roof, the clapboards had sucked up the last of the paint. One black shutter was torn, and the gray wood was weathered and split. The fields, empty and brown, looked like they were ready to sleep, waiting for some kind of rebirth.

I knew Rick could help us with those fields. Didi was right about that.

I skirted the porch and went in the side, It didn't take more than an hour to pack. My hands were steady as I put clothes and pictures in as big a sack as I could carry.

Then I headed to the basement with some candles. I loosened a couple of old paint lids, opened the tin of thinner, sat the candles in the hard earth. Ripping up some boxes, I scattered them along the floor, and moved the wood crates down from the shelves.

I said a few words, like the old Didi might. -- A ceremony. We did it the time Jasper the cat was mauled by a neighbor's dog. We called, but he just looked at us and wouldn't come; then he limped off to die. Didi would remember all those times, I thought.

The candles flickered bright. . The screen door clanged shut behind me, and I tied the sack across the basket on my bike. I stopped only once, looking from a distance at the smoke which began to rise. Then I got back on and rode.

§ § §

Andrea Durgin Pawliczek lives in the Hudson Valley, NY with her lawyer husband, beautiful young daughter and nine pets. She practices divorce, family law and general litigation in her own firm . “Ceremony” is her first accepted piece of fiction.

This piece was first published in INK POT #2 - 2003, a literary journal.

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